Black and White
by GoliathQueen
Summary: Uchiha Shiro, and her twin brother, Sasuke, were the remaining Uchina left after the genocide committed by their own older brother, Itachi. This story explores how Shiro comes to terms with her life as a shinobi and her fight against the hatred and hunger for vengeance that has all but consumed Sasuke. Will she be able to break the cycle of hatred? Or will she succumb to it?
1. PROLOGUE

**THE WORLD OF NARUTO BELONGS TO KISHIMOTO (He's the man!)...Shiro's mine though :3**

 **PROLOGUE**

With the sun on her back, Shiro Uchiha flew down the busy streets of Konohagakure. People went about their daily chores, barely paying attention to the black-haired girl. She pulled to a stop in front of the Academy where a pair of men were taking down a banner congratulating the new gradutes. Heart dropping to the pit of her stomach, she realized that she had been too late. She missed graduation; She had been looking forward to it, all week.

Sighing she was just about to turn back around, her failure heavy on her shoulders when someone called her name.

"Shiro!"

She raised her head to see a brown haired boy with pale, almost purplish eyes standing just outside the Academy.

"Neji," she croaked, remembering how she had pestered him to come to her graduation. He came but she didn't.

Neji just shook his head at her, his eyes stern and cold. She could almost hear him scolding her for being so careless. When she neared him, the edge of his lips tilt up to a slight smile. Her heart somehow inched back up. Gesturing for her to follow, Neji went back inside the Academy.

Confused, Shiro did. Inside, she watched as Neji stepped into the stage.

"What are you waiting for? Come up here."

Shiro almost smiled then, knowing what her friend was trying to do. Up there, clutched in his hands, she saw the steel of a head protector glaring up against the light. Her steely gray eyes lifted to see ivory eyes looking back at her with a proud glint in them. Neji recited some words—Shiro took them in like music in her ears—and afterwards, he leaned over to tie the head protector around her forehead. The sigil of their hometown, Konohagakure, sat proud in her forehead.

"Congratulations, Shiro."

Though Neji's face is as calm as the surface of a lake, there was warmth in them. Warmth he allows only her to see. Her heart lurched, both from happiness and pride.

"Thank you, Neji," she whispered with a thick voice. She tiptoed to press a light kiss on his cheeks and then embraced him tight. Neji stiffened—she heard his heart beating fast and frantic—but returned the embrace.

They were walking downtown, passing by a famous food stall called Ichiraku ramen when someone called Shiro's name. Haruno Sakura and Yamanaka Ino stepped down the stools of the ramen shop.

"Shiro," the pink-haired Sakura began. "We didn't see you at gra—" She stopped, seeing the boy accompanying her classmate.

"Hyuuga Neji," Ino gasped, blue-green eyes wide with shock. Composing herself, she ran her hands through her hair as if they're unruly. Shiro noticed the flirtatious gleam in her eyes which she ran over Neji.

He merely glanced at her, then turned to Shiro. "I need to take care of some things. I'll leave you here with your..." He trailed off, eyes fleeting to the blond haired shinobi obviously flirting with him. "..them."

Shiro nodded silently and watched him walk away. She felt someone nudge her by the arm. "Neji, eh?"

"He's a fr—"

"He's really handsome," Ino swooned, cutting her off. "And last year, he's the number one rookie."

Sakura rolled her eyes. "Sasuke's more handsome," she interjected, referring to their batch's number one rookie.

"I think Neji's more good-looking," Shiro found herself arguing. Ino winked at her while Sakura rolled her eyes again. In her peripheral vision, she sees Naruto, who had been sitting at one of the stools, eyeing them with suspicious eyes. Remembering how Neji often refers to him as a 'dropout', she flashed him a genuine smile. Then Shikamaru, his lazy eyes roaming about, and his bestfriend, Choji, with a pack of chips in his hands, stopped by the arguing Ino and Sakura.

"Women," he snorted as he and Choji took a seat on one of the stools. Shiro did the same, leaving the blonde and pink-haired girls to themselves. Shiro sat beside them and ordered a fully-loaded ramen.

Which is why she had returned home late. The walk home brought her in front of the place that used to be the sector of Uchiha clan. _Still is,_ she corrected herself. A portion had been given to other citizens but their old house was still theirs. The place was solely for the Uchihas. Not since that night.

"You're back." She was in the process of removing her shoes when his voice came.

Uchiha Sasuke, her only family, stood by the kitchen with a glass of water in his hand. His dark eyes regarded her with coldness and a tinge of irritation; the only emotions he could coax out of her twin brother. She forced herself to smile. "We're finally genins, how nice is that," she commented.

Sasuke snorted and passed by her, probably heading to Naka shrine. She knew it was unhealthy, his feeding off on his hatred but he would not hear anything she has to say.  
The front door closed behind him, leaving her in a cold and lifeless house by herself.

"I'm home," she whispered to herself—trying the feel of it— as she had so many times before. However, looking at the sparsely decorated, almost empty room, she knew this was no home. She untied the head protector from her head. Running a hand through the engraved symbol of her village, she thought of her best friend, Hyuuga Neji.


	2. Chapter 1

**SHIRO**

A week later, they were called to a C-rank mission which consist of escorting a daimyo's daughter back to a castle near the border between the Land of Fire and Water. Her team mates, Shin and Nino took the rear, just behind the daimyu's daughter and her three bodyguards while she and Genma-sensei took the front. Hyuuga Shin has activated his byakugan—his white eyes and the veins in his face more pronounced. Nino, his eyelids heavy, walked beside him with a slouch. A yawn escaped his lips and Shiro half-expected him to mutter an arrogant comment about how easy this mission is.

Yes, it was rather an easy mission. That was, until they encountered a group of well-trained rogue shinobis. A pair of kunai had gone flying from the woods on both sides of the group. Shiro, managed to deflect the two coming her way. She heard Genma-sensei clicked his tongue as a group of six shinobis appeared all around them. Their head protectors have a line coming across the various Hidden Villages where they come from. Two of them were from Konoha. One threw shurikens towards Shiro which she easily deflected. However, she was caught off-guard when the other Konoha missing-nin—

another term for rogue shinobi— charged at her with a kunai.

 _Too slow,_ Neji used to tell her when they spar. _You'd be dead before you can even blink._

Shiro dropped to a crouch just as the kunai thrust above her. She braced herself on the ground and threw a kick at his legs. He lost his grip on the kunai, which she caugh and before he could fall, her feet connected to his chin, throwing him back up. She plunged the kunai to his neck.

His frantic eyes turned to her. Heart-thumping loud in her chest, she tried to ignore the warm blood coating her hands, carrying with it, his life. He coughed and writhed on his side. Shiro could only watch with horror-stricken eyes at the realization that she had taken a life. _In cold blood._

She didn't even realize that the fighting around her had stopped—the missing-nins were all either dead or wounded. Shin was looking at her shaking form with pity in his white eyes; Nino's own lazy smiles were gone as he regarded the man he had just killed.

"You did great," Genma-sensei told them after assessing the condition of the untouched daimyo's daughter. A bodyguard had died for her, though. "You all did great."

Shiro wished Neji was here to tell her something—anything—for only his words would have calmed her. She knew this was bound to happen; she's a shinobi for goodness' sake. However, looking down at the lifeless eyes of the Konoha missing-nin, she began to question if she's really suited for this job.

"That was the first kill, too," Nino had told her as they were heading back to Konoha after safely delivering the daimyo's daughter. He told her this without that usual easy-go-luck grin on his face. For the first time, he looked serious. "But we'd have to do something, right? We have the skills, where do we put it?"

Shiro was not surprise at how Nino sees things. Everything must be simple, laid out in the platter, for him.

Back at Konoha, after reporting to the Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen, they parted ways. But not before Genma-sensei asked her if she's alright; to which, she smiled and replied that she's fine and understood what she had to do. The lies slipped past her lips, betraying the turmoil in her belly and the tight vise on her chest.

A few feet from her house, she froze. Neji was leaning—his arms crossed against his chest—against the lamp post just in front. With his eyes closed, he almost looked serene. Apparently, he felt her presence. His eyelids rose to reveal ivory eyes with purple tinge. Unlike Nino and most Hyuugas she had ever seen, Neji's eyes have a more prominent color, the farthest from white. He also kept his brown hair long, for tradition, he told her, and tied at the end. Even Hinata, his cousin and Shiro's former seatmate, only have plain white eyes.

When she came near him, his brows furrowed with concern. He sees what others could not; her facade. "What happened?"

"I killed someone."

While other shinobis would scoff at her or dismiss her troubles as childish and dramatic, Neji did not. He pulled her to the porch and they sat down, untouching. Unshed tears clouded her vision, making her mentally curse herself for being ridiculous.

"It's not ridiculous," Neji said. She had said it out loud. He continued, "I've also had, for a second, thought if that is the right thing. But then, I thought of the people who could not protect themselves. The people who are weak. And the people we are sworn to protect, might it be for duty or... something."

Shiro felt the tears come pouring out of her eyes. _Or something._ She knew what Neji meant by that but failing to put a word to it. _Love,_ she thought and understood how funny it would be to come from his mouth.

"Thank you, Neji."

He stiffened and looked uncomfortable. People call him cold, arrogant and looks down on everyone. He might be the latter two but not the first one. Neji, for her, is the warmest person.

That night, she fell into a deep slumber; the nightmares she had been dreading did not come.

 **SASUKE**

While his sister slept soundly at the house where their family's blood was shed, Sasuke was paying his nightly visit to Naka shrine. Candles were lit, illuminating the dank and abandoned place. Sasuke, his sharingan activated, performed the seals to unlock the inscriptions written on the walls in front of him. He had awakened his sharingan the night he almost fell to the murdering hands of his older brother, Itachi. The pain that came from the loss of his family gave way to sheer hatred that clutched at his heart, tightening until he could no longer breath. His vision became blurry, but not by tears. Then his sharingan came. He almost thought then that he could kill Itachi. He made to attack him but of course failed; he was thrown towards his back and fell into the merciless tsukiyomi—a genjutsu where the inflicted person suffers endless torture that felt like days and sometimes years when it is only for a span of seconds. In it, his father, mother and sister were repeatedly slain in front of him. Their cries of agony a constant reminder.

When he came about, he found himself in a hospital; His supposedly slain sister crying by his bed side. She had not been there that night.

At first, that brought him relief, knowing she had not witnessed what he had, had not seen how their brother cold-bloodedly killed their family and relatives. As the years passed, he had grown to resent her and her easy-going and cheerful smiles. Her mindless thoughts while he silently suffered.

 _"_ _If you want to kill me...curse me! Hate me! And live a long and unsightly life"_ , Itachi's voice haunts his thoughts, both awake and asleep. "Run away... run away... and cling to your pitiful life. And then some day, when you have the same eyes as I do, come before me."

He thought of a million ways to kill him, to make him suffer until the last breath has gone from his body. Someday, he would.

 _I have your eyes now, Itachi_ , his thoughts, like a serpent slithering across his mind, came. _I will come to you. When I do, I will not spare you the mercy you showed me._


End file.
